Ginobili scored 24 points and San Antonio ran away from what barely resembled the up-and-coming Memphis team that stunned the 61-win Spurs in the first round last season, beating the Grizzlies 95-82 on Monday night.

San Antonio began what could be Tim Duncan’s final season with a satisfying bit of payback but otherwise didn’t read much into the victory. Take Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, who utterly bullied the Spurs in that playoff series but combined for just 23 points this time.

“Zac was off. He didn’t have of these games in the playoffs,” Ginobili said. “That happens the first game of the season. We all need time to get back in shape. “

Rudy Gay led Memphis with 19 points and 10 rebounds in his first game in nearly 10 months. Gay missed the end of last season with a bad left shoulder, including when Memphis knocked out the top-seeded Spurs.

Yet even with the full starting lineup that Memphis would’ve preferred in last year’s playoffs, the Grizzlies still remained winless on opening night since the franchise left Vancouver in 2001.

Not quite the start the NBA’s breakout team of last season had in mind.

“We didn’t play very well. We did turn the ball over alot, but we didn’t guard,” Memphis coach Lionel Hollins said. “We didn’t guard them in the pick in roll. We gave up transition points. It was not a very well-played game by us at all.”

The Grizzlies committed 24 turnovers. Randolph had 10 points and six rebounds and Gasol had 13 and six. In the playoffs series against the Spurs, Randolph averaged 21.5 points.

It’s not like the Spurs got any bigger to defend the Grizzlies’ big frontline. DeJuan Blair, the 6-foot-7 center deemed too ineffective by coach Gregg Popovich to even play Games 5 and 6 against Memphis, was back in the starting lineup.

The Spurs have precious few alternatives: forward Antonio McDyess officially retired in training camp, and they haven’t added a big man to replace him. Yet San Antonio was helped by 7-footer Tiago Splitter, who didn’t look as lost as he did as rookie against Memphis last season.

“He was really solid,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “He stayed in good position, he blocked shots and he rebounded. He was real special tonight.”

Mike Conley had 11 points and seven assists for the Grizzlies. Memphis led by one at halftime but were blown out in the third quarter after shooting just 29 percent from the floor.

Despite the loss, Gay was satisfied with his return.

“It’s kind of bittersweet we lost, but it good that I’m healthy and I can get out there and play,” he said.

Richard Jefferson, once thought to be a goner in San Antonio under the NBA’s new amnesty clause, added 14 points for the Spurs. Duncan had 10 points in 22 minutes as the challenge of rationing the 35-year-old’s minutes in a compressed, grueling schedule began.

Duncan is playing in the final year of his contract but hasn’t said whether this will be his last run for a fifth title.

If Duncan and the Spurs have one last championship run left in them, there was no better first test than Memphis. The bigger and quicker Grizzlies gave the aging Spurs fits in the playoffs last April even without Gay, who had been Memphis’ second-leading scorer.

For opening night, at least, San Antonio showed it can still keep up.

Leonard can take some credit for that. The 15th overall pick brought a jolt off the bench in the third quarter when the Spurs opened up a 19-point lead despite trailing at halftime. Leonard had six points during the stretch, including hitting a corner 3-pointer after catching a nifty behind-the-back pass from Ginobili.

Leonard is the centerpiece of what the Spurs are calling their youth movement — seven of their 13 players have fewer than three years of experience. But the face and fortunes of the franchise still firmly belong to Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, who started their 10th season together.

Notes: Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III watched the game with some of his Baylor teammates. The Bears are in town to play Washington in the Alamo Bowl on Thursday…Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones, who owns a home in San Antonio, sat courtside with Spurs owner Peter Holt. …The Spurs remain without G Gary Neal after the second-year backup had his appendix removed during training camp.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

CBSSports.com wire reports
Dec. 26, 2011

SAN ANTONIO — Manu Ginobili never saw the Memphis Grizzlies play that badly in the playoffs, and is pretty sure he won’t again.

But the San Antonio Spurs will take it.

Ginobili scored 24 points and San Antonio ran away from what barely resembled the up-and-coming Memphis team that stunned the 61-win Spurs in the first round last season, beating the Grizzlies 95-82 on Monday night.

San Antonio began what could be Tim Duncan’s final season with a satisfying bit of payback but otherwise didn’t read much into the victory. Take Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, who utterly bullied the Spurs in that playoff series but combined for just 23 points this time.

“Zac was off. He didn’t have of these games in the playoffs,” Ginobili said. “That happens the first game of the season. We all need time to get back in shape. ”

Rudy Gay led Memphis with 19 points and 10 rebounds in his first game in nearly 10 months. Gay missed the end of last season with a bad left shoulder, including when Memphis knocked out the top-seeded Spurs.

Yet even with the full starting lineup that Memphis would’ve preferred in last year’s playoffs, the Grizzlies still remained winless on opening night since the franchise left Vancouver in 2001.

Not quite the start the NBA’s breakout team of last season had in mind.

“We didn’t play very well. We did turn the ball over alot, but we didn’t guard,” Memphis coach Lionel Hollins said. “We didn’t guard them in the pick in roll. We gave up transition points. It was not a very well-played game by us at all.”

The Grizzlies committed 24 turnovers. Randolph had 10 points and six rebounds and Gasol had 13 and six. In the playoffs series against the Spurs, Randolph averaged 21.5 points.

It’s not like the Spurs got any bigger to defend the Grizzlies’ big frontline. DeJuan Blair, the 6-foot-7 center deemed too ineffective by coach Gregg Popovich to even play Games 5 and 6 against Memphis, was back in the starting lineup.

The Spurs have precious few alternatives: forward Antonio McDyess officially retired in training camp, and they haven’t added a big man to replace him. Yet San Antonio was helped by 7-footer Tiago Splitter, who didn’t look as lost as he did as rookie against Memphis last season.

“He was really solid,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “He stayed in good position, he blocked shots and he rebounded. He was real special tonight.”

Mike Conley had 11 points and seven assists for the Grizzlies. Memphis led by one at halftime but were blown out in the third quarter after shooting just 29 percent from the floor.

Despite the loss, Gay was satisfied with his return.

“It’s kind of bittersweet we lost, but it good that I’m healthy and I can get out there and play,” he said.

Richard Jefferson, once thought to be a goner in San Antonio under the NBA’s new amnesty clause, added 14 points for the Spurs. Duncan had 10 points in 22 minutes as the challenge of rationing the 35-year-old’s minutes in a compressed, grueling schedule began.

Duncan is playing in the final year of his contract but hasn’t said whether this will be his last run for a fifth title.

If Duncan and the Spurs have one last championship run left in them, there was no better first test than Memphis. The bigger and quicker Grizzlies gave the aging Spurs fits in the playoffs last April even without Gay, who had been Memphis’ second-leading scorer.

For opening night, at least, San Antonio showed it can still keep up.

Leonard can take some credit for that. The 15th overall pick brought a jolt off the bench in the third quarter when the Spurs opened up a 19-point lead despite trailing at halftime. Leonard had six points during the stretch, including hitting a corner 3-pointer after catching a nifty behind-the-back pass from Ginobili.

Leonard is the centerpiece of what the Spurs are calling their youth movement — seven of their 13 players have fewer than three years of experience. But the face and fortunes of the franchise still firmly belong to Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, who started their 10th season together.

Notes

• Heisman Trophy winner Robert Griffin III watched the game with some of his Baylor teammates. The Bears are in town to play Washington in the Alamo Bowl on Thursday.
• Academy Award winner Tommy Lee Jones, who owns a home in San Antonio, sat courtside with Spurs owner Peter Holt.
• The Spurs remain without G Gary Neal after the second-year backup had his appendix removed during training camp.

 

Published Saturday, December 24, 2011 8:22 PM

By PAUL J. WEBER
Associated Press

SAN ANTONIO — If this really is Tim Duncan’s final season, a perfect ending won’t come easy.

The four-time NBA champion has won just one playoff series in the last three years. Tony Parker himself called the San Antonio Spurs finished as contenders in May, before later walking back that blunt assessment of his own team.

The Spurs didn’t find an upgrade from Richard Jefferson after the lockout, and in a sign of how badly they need big men, couldn’t talk 37-year-old Antonio McDyess into playing another season.

That leaves Duncan, entering his 15th season and the end of his contract, making perhaps his last try for a fifth title with largely the same group that hasn’t come close lately.

“This is basically the same team,” Duncan said. “We have as good an opportunity as anyone else. We have that experience a lot of people are going to work for.”

Duncan arrived at training camp insisting he’s not yet thinking about retirement. He’ll be 36 when the playoffs roll around and will make $21 million this season, behind only Kobe Bryant ($25 million) and Rashard Lewis ($22 million).

The big payday is Duncan’s reward for making the Spurs the winningest franchise in major professional sports the past 14 years, surpassing even the New England Patriots or New York Yankees in winning percentage. Even last year, against all expectations, the Spurs won 61 games and reclaimed the Western Conference’s top seed.

It still wasn’t good enough.

It was easy to read into San Antonio’s first-round loss as more than an upset. The Memphis Grizzlies, quick and big, made the Spurs look slow and small.

Weeks after losing to Memphis in six games, Parker was in Paris telling French journalists that was the last chance for the aging Spurs, whose last title was in 2007. “We will always have a good team but can no longer say we’re playing for a championship,” he said.

Parker later backed away from those remarks, and returned to San Antonio this month with a cheerier outlook.

“A lot of young teams are coming up, so we just have to make sure we can keep up and be competitive,” Parker said. “You have to be positive and you have to believe in your team. I definitely believe in my team. Hopefully we can stay healthy and not have those little bumps like last year.”

If San Antonio does have another run left in them, it’ll be up to mostly the same cast. That includes Jefferson, who survived last week’s amnesty deadline after the Spurs had a chance to part ways with the underachieving swingman who is due $9.2 million this season.

The Spurs courted free agents Caron Butler and Josh Howard. Though after it became apparent Jefferson would make it to opening day, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich defended his starting small forward as an improving defender and reliable 3-point shooter.

“It’s kind of interesting. Everybody always asked about amnesty, and I always wondered why Richard, Richard, Richard,” Popovich said. “As if we didn’t advance in the playoffs because of Richard. I don’t think anybody played great.”

Be that as it may, the Spurs may have landed Jefferson’s eventual replacement in rookie Kawhi Leonard. Selected 15th overall by Indiana, the 6-foot-7 forward was dealt in a draft-day trade for guard George Hill, who was Parker’s backup and a budding star in the Popovich’s eyes.

Yet it was a price Popovich says he was willing to pay. The 20-year-old Leonard brings not only youth and size but a knack for defense, which Popovich is reprioritizing after the Spurs were — rather atypically — better known for outscoring teams than stopping them last season.

Parker (17.5 points per game) and 34-year-old Ginobili (17.4 points) will again drive San Antonio’s offense from the backcourt, and veteran T.J. Ford replaces Hill off the bench. The frontcourt is a larger concern: with McDyess gone, the big men left are 3-point marksman Matt Bonner, undersized 6-foot-7 center DeJuan Blair and 7-footer Tiago Splitter.

Then there’s Duncan. The two-time MVP, whose scoring and rebounding (13.4 and 8.9) were career lows last year, is the only Spurs player left from the 1999 team that won the franchise’s first championship in that lockout-shortened season.

Duncan draws no comparisons to then and now. He just knows the toll awaiting him in the compressed schedule ahead.

“It wasn’t a grind to me then,” Duncan recalled of 1999. “I was running like a deer up and down every day. I wanted to play. But this is going to feel different, I know it.”

---

The Spurs didn’t find an upgrade from Richard Jefferson after the lockout, and in a sign of how badly they need big men, couldn’t talk 37-year-old Antonio McDyess into playing another season.

That leaves Duncan, entering his 15th season and the end of his contract, making perhaps his last try for a fifth title with largely the same group that hasn’t come close lately.

“This is basically the same team,” Duncan said. “We have as good an opportunity as anyone else. We have that experience a lot of people are going to work for.”

Duncan arrived at training camp insisting he’s not yet thinking about retirement. He’ll be 36 when the playoffs roll around and will make $21 million this season, behind only Kobe Bryant ($25 million) and Rashard Lewis ($22 million).

The big payday is Duncan’s reward for making the Spurs the winningest franchise in major professional sports the past 14 years, surpassing even the New England Patriots or New York Yankees in winning percentage. Even last year, against all expectations, the Spurs won 61 games and reclaimed the Western Conference’s top seed.

It still wasn’t good enough.

It was easy to read into San Antonio’s first-round loss as more than an upset. The Memphis Grizzlies, quick and big, made the Spurs look slow and small.

Weeks after losing to Memphis in six games, Parker was in Paris telling French journalists that was the last chance for the aging Spurs, whose last title was in 2007. “We will always have a good team but can no longer say we’re playing for a championship,” he said.

Parker later backed away from those remarks, and returned to San Antonio this month with a cheerier outlook.

“A lot of young teams are coming up, so we just have to make sure we can keep up and be competitive,” Parker said. “You have to be positive and you have to believe in your team. I definitely believe in my team. Hopefully we can stay healthy and not have those little bumps like last year.”

If San Antonio does have another run left in them, it’ll be up to mostly the same cast. That includes Jefferson, who survived last week’s amnesty deadline after the Spurs had a chance to part ways with the underachieving swingman who is due $9.2 million this season.

The Spurs courted free agents Caron Butler and Josh Howard. Though after it became apparent Jefferson would make it to opening day, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich defended his starting small forward as an improving defender and reliable 3-point shooter.

“It’s kind of interesting. Everybody always asked about amnesty, and I always wondered why Richard, Richard, Richard,” Popovich said. “As if we didn’t advance in the playoffs because of Richard. I don’t think anybody played great.”

Be that as it may, the Spurs may have landed Jefferson’s eventual replacement in rookie Kawhi Leonard. Selected 15th overall by Indiana, the 6-foot-7 forward was dealt in a draft-day trade for guard George Hill, who was Parker’s backup and a budding star in the Popovich’s eyes.

Yet it was a price Popovich says he was willing to pay. The 20-year-old Leonard brings not only youth and size but a knack for defense, which Popovich is reprioritizing after the Spurs were — rather atypically — better known for outscoring teams than stopping them last season.

Parker (17.5 points per game) and 34-year-old Ginobili (17.4 points) will again drive San Antonio’s offense from the backcourt, and veteran T.J. Ford replaces Hill off the bench. The frontcourt is a larger concern: with McDyess gone, the big men left are 3-point marksman Matt Bonner, undersized 6-foot-7 center DeJuan Blair and 7-footer Tiago Splitter.

Then there’s Duncan. The two-time MVP, whose scoring and rebounding (13.4 and 8.9) were career lows last year, is the only Spurs player left from the 1999 team that won the franchise’s first championship in that lockout-shortened season.

Duncan draws no comparisons to then and now. He just knows the toll awaiting him in the compressed schedule ahead.

“It wasn’t a grind to me then,” Duncan recalled of 1999. “I was running like a deer up and down every day. I wanted to play. But this is going to feel different, I know it.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

SAN ANTONIO (AP) – Richard Jefferson isn’t sure whether the San Antonio Spurs will keep him or not.

Jefferson reported for training camp Friday amid speculation that the Spurs will trade or waive him under the league’s amnesty provision. The veteran swingman has spent two underachieving seasons in San Antonio and is due $9.2 million this year.

Jefferson spoke as though his days might be numbered in San Antonio. Spurs guard Manu Ginobili also didn’t sound confident that his teammate would be around.

The Spurs traded for Jefferson in 2009 to bring in some scoring punch. Jefferson has instead struggled to fit in and was benched at the end of the playoffs last season.

Free agent Josh Howard has talked with the Spurs and could be a replacement.